


New Tricks

by seven (sevenpoints)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenpoints/pseuds/seven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a brave new world, and if Raleigh and Mako can't find a place in it they'll just have to have to make one of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Tricks

There was so much to do in the first breathless weeks after V-Day: medical checks, endless debriefings, press conference after press conference in more languages than either of them spoke. Then, the memorial services with Marshall Hercules Hansen standing on Mako’s other side, clean-shaven for the first time since Raleigh met him. They stood in a solemn row for the cameras and other mourners, eyes dry, backs straight. Later they retired to Herc’s quarters with their collars loosened and Mako’s shoes (flats, but they pinched her toes) kicked off at the door. Alone, they honored Stacker and Chuck properly, with whiskey and the six pack of smuggled Sapporo that had appeared outside of Mako's room with a note from Newt. Apparently he'd made friends in low places, but if no one asked, he wouldn't tell. 

When the night turned nostalgic, Raleigh mostly listened. Herc told stories about the sweet boy Chuck had been before loss and necessity filed him down to a saw-toothed edge, and Mako told them about the year Stacker brought home a pile of blue and white t-shirts so they could cut them up and re-sew them into a Sailor Mercury costume, complete with foil tiara. It was hard to reconcile the stories with the men he'd known so briefly and in such extreme circumstances, but it was good to know that they weren't forgotten, and would live on in the drift. 

In the morning he and Mako dragged themselves off the sofa and floor to discover that Max had ensured that the remains of Mako’s shoes would never blister anyone’s toes again. They shuffled back to their own quarters with Mako’s feet swimming inside Herc’s spare boots.

Raleigh was in and out of the shower before he realized there was nowhere he needed to be. He didn’t have to wrangle his hangover and make himself presentable. He could even go back to bed if he wanted; it was barely past dawn anyway. He could have the whole day to himself and not see another soul.

When looked out his spyhole, Mako was already poking her head out her door, peeking back at him.

They met in the middle, returned Herc’s boots and stopped by the mess to collect breakfast trays before letting their bodies wander up every stair and ladder they could find. Mako was an ace at climbing ladders one-handed with her tray balanced on the other palm; Raleigh slipped and lost his bread, raising a string of surprised curses from technicians below.

They finally emerged on the top of the Shatterdome, higher even than Danger’s cockpit. From there they couldn’t hear much besides the sea and the quiet sounds of their own meal.

“It’s different now, isn’t it,” he said when they were down to picking at their plates.

When Mako looked up, he nodded at the horizon where the new sun sat, heavy and red. “The water.”

She nodded. The sunrise glowed on her face and made the blue tips of her hair give off sparks. The drift had shown them how they’d appeared in each other’s eyes but Raleigh wished they could return to it one more time, just to show Mako how she looked in that light.

“It was always a mystery,” she said, “but now it’s not so scary.”

“It’s only a matter of time before someone gets bold again. Maybe on our end this time.” He could imagine it all too easily. “A new age of empires.”

“And a higher form of war.” She still looked out at the sunrise and he knew she was imagining it: sea towers built over the Rift, over hundreds of Rifts, deploying jaegers not to defend their world but to invade others. 

“They’d want us back, if they managed it,” he said. The question went unspoken.

“No,” she answered. She turned and looked inland, to where the city hadn’t even begun to rebuild. “I could never put another planet through this. Sen--the Marshall did not die so we could become the monsters.” She smiled. “And Yancy would kick your ass for letting it happen.”

He laughed; her imitation of his accent was precise. //Let’s go,// he said, his Japanese much improved. //I can't feel my ass.//

Inside they slipped into safety gear and jumpsuits to join the teams dismantling the Dome. Dressed like that they were just two anonymous crew, but they could always find each other when they split up. It really was like being two parts of one body: they didn’t necessarily always know the other’s inner workings, but they could find each other in relation to themselves. Raleigh was pretty sure he could pick Mako out of a line up even if he were deaf and blind and a thousand miles away. A hard hat and goggles were nothing.

Hours later they said goodnight and went to their rooms. Raleigh prepared for bed, muscles aching pleasantly from the day’s work. The quiet of their morning had lingered in him and he felt so comfortable in his own skin that he didn’t notice his body taking him across the hall until he was standing at Mako’s door.

She opened it before he had a chance to knock, and he slipped inside without a word.

He thought maybe they’d make love, but when he gathered Mako for a kiss he didn’t want to stop. She kept trying new things, clearly inexperienced, but just as clearly unafraid. Raleigh was happy to let her learn what happened when she bit his lip (he groaned) or sucked his tongue (he went completely lightheaded and she had to press him to the wall). He was more than happy to offer a few pointers, licking into her mouth bit by bit until she melted open for him and they collapsed into her bunk, too preoccupied to keep propping each other up.

They drifted off wedged into the single bed with almost half of Raleigh’s body dangling off the side, but it was still the best sleep he’d gotten in years.

+++

The next day Raleigh had a lot of thinking to do.

He’d lived Mako’s life with the endless parade of trainees and jaeger crews. It got to where she didn’t really register faces anymore--she looked at people and saw their sim scores, fighting styles and personality profiles. Every one of them clashed with her, enough to keep her disinterested in even a casual hook up. How could she lose herself in the moment when all she saw was incompatibility?

So she waited, and in the meantime, she learned about her own mind and body. Mako’s knowledge of herself was absolute. It was what made her keep working to become a pilot in spite of all the times her sensei said no. In spite of how many times her fellow trainees said no. She knew, just like she’d known he was her co-pilot the way she saw _Raleigh_ instead of a war hero.

Raleigh didn’t really understand how it was possible that they were drift compatible. He’d been born with his co-pilot and everything had fallen into place from there. He and Yancy fought through the ranks, sure, but the solidity of their bond put them head and shoulders above the rest. He’d never possessed the patience or strength of character that Mako carried inside herself like embers, banked and waiting for her to draw the breath that would ignite them.

Well, maybe that was why they worked. Maybe he was the breath.

“Are you listening, Becket?”

Whoops.

“Yes, sir,” he said anyway. Herc just gave him a level stare. “Could you expand on your last point, sir?”

Herc sighed and repeated whatever he’d been saying about the plans to adapt drift technology and all the leftover jaeger tech to speed up the reconstruction, and Raleigh pretended he didn’t feel Mako’s stare, the one that measured his heart rate and temperature and formed an educated guess about his current mental state. He waited for Herc to pace away from them before sliding a glance toward her and winking.

If she rolled her eyes any harder they’d fall out of her head. 

Herc turned on his heel and they flicked their eyes forward again. “...so they’ll obviously need to recalibrate the drift tech, to make it a one-way street, or at least limit the neural feedback to the arbeiters’ hands instead of the whole rig.”

 _Arbeiters_. Laborers, instead of hunters. Raleigh smiled inwardly. That sounded right.

“They’ll want our help,” Mako said. “We’re happy to give it.”

Raleigh let himself smile openly that time. _We_ , indeed.

“I’m hoping you two won’t have to get directly involved until they’ve got a prototype set up, or at least a simulator. Tendo’s their expert consult for now.” Herc rubbed his eyes. “Never thought I’d live to see us back in R&D mode.”

He glanced toward the empty space at his side then stumbled over nothing, suddenly off-balance. They stepped forward to steady him, but he jerked back from their hands.

“Dismissed,” he snapped, closing his eyes when Max whined.

The two of them slipped out silently, leaving Herc alone.

When the door shut behind them she yanked him close, squeezing his hand in both of hers. It wasn't gentle and it wasn't a caress. It was nothing more or less than an attempt to smash their atoms together until the space between them didn't exist. _Not alone_ , he reminded himself, twisting in her grip until he could squeeze back. Never alone, not anymore.

Maybe one day Herc would remember how to walk on his own. Chuck had only been twenty-one. At that age most kids were leaving home for the first time while their parents turned their bedrooms into home gyms, but Chuck and Herc had spent the last few years getting closer than humanly possible. Raleigh remembered how it was to lose your other half, the way your balance was shot and your thoughts went unfinished. Nothing felt real for the first few months after Anchorage, because nothing was real until Yancy lived it with him.

Mako understood. She had Raleigh’s memories, but she also had her own. She remembered Stacker stumbling in just the same way while he walked her to school. She learned to be patient when he spoke, appreciating the pause while he finished his thought because they were both still learning each other’s languages and a little extra time didn’t hurt.

She’d seen Stacker recover, gradually, until he learned how to be one person again. She’d experienced Raleigh doing the same. Herc would learn too.

+++

It took the R&D teams about seventy-two hours to turn around a simulator.

“It was actually very simple when we realized we needed to scale _down_ instead of _up_ ,” Tendo explained. “There’s no reason to have a full neural bridge with the entire arbeiter, since it’d be simple enough to maneuver using manual controls like in normal construction equipment. We just need to make sure operators won’t experience any discomfort if their arms and sensory input are bridged but rest of their bodies aren’t.”

“Shouldn’t be too bad,” Raleigh said, turning to check with Mako for agreement.

She nodded. “We don’t have trouble tasting food just because jaegers had no tongues.”

Tendo nodded. “Right. All the same though, it’d be a weight off our minds to know for sure.” He lead them up to the simulators, which looked just like they always did except for a few missing panels where the techs wanted direct access to the hardware. They walked past the solo sims to the tandem and were already stepping into the stirrups when Tendo cleared his throat.

“Uh, guys?”

They turned, and saw him standing back by the first machines.

“A limited neural bridge means a limited neural load,” Tendo said. “We’ve been developing the arbeiter software for solo operators.”

Raleigh reached for Mako instinctively and she was already at his side. The backs of their hands bumped, lightly enough to look like an accident, before they were squaring their shoulders and leaving the tandem behind. They could do this. They’d both done plenty of solo simulator training before becoming rangers. Mako had been in these very machines less than a month ago.

Belatedly, Raleigh remembered his bad left arm, but Tendo was already murmuring in his ear, assuring him that the arbeiters would be lighter and much less complicated than jaegers. He wouldn’t need to throw a punch or fire a cannon, just manipulate objects. A cakewalk, compared to a fight.

The techs kept them in their sims for hours and while Raleigh had expected that, he hadn’t expected to do it alone. He’d expected to have Mako beside him with her brilliant eyes speaking volumes about her boredom and her opinion of techs who weren’t Tendo. Raleigh hadn’t known it was possible to blink sarcastically, but Mako definitely could. She could make him laugh with a single glance.

“Okay Raleigh, we’re gonna run the sim one...more...uh, no, we’re not.” Tendo chuckled over the feed. “Mako’s had enough. You can go ahead and unplug.”

He whooped and scrambled out, wincing when his knees creaked with stiffness. Mako was already out and stretching her quads while sharing her last comments with the techs. Raleigh hopped around a bit waiting for her to finish, trying to get his legs warmed up.

“You’ll want to make seated rigs that allow for ergonomic adjustment, or ones that allow free movement for the lower body,” she was saying. 

“You should also create a lock, so that operators can put the arbeiter in place then disengage,” Raleigh added. “No one wants to sit around being a glorified C-clamp.”

They left in a flurry of absentminded thank yous as the techs compared notes. Raleigh jogged a few yards ahead then came back. “I can’t remember the last time I stood still for that long,” he said. “You wanna hit the Kwoon?”

“No thank you,” Mako replied. Her eyes were guarded and it hit Raleigh like a slap in the face after they’d been sharing space and thinking each other’s thoughts for so long. He was so stunned that he didn’t react to her walking away from him until she was around a corner and out of sight.

+++

He didn’t bother to look for her. They tended to want the same things, so if he wanted her with him, there was a good chance she wanted him too. If she was going to deny herself something, he wasn’t going to interfere. 

Well, at least not right away.

Instead, he let Gottlieb and Newt corner him like they’d been trying to for days (sure they were geniuses, but they couldn’t stop bickering long enough to sneak up on anyone) and answered all the questions they’d been dying to ask about the kaiju world. Those weren’t memories or experiences that he’d shared with Mako, so it was easy enough to set aside his burgeoning separation anxiety and scrape together whatever images he could recall.

Mostly he got to kick back in a comfortable chair and watch them fight. It was almost as good as television.

He dragged Herc into the city for dinner ( _“When’s the last time you ate anything besides reconstituted protein?”_ ). Jaeger pilots were frontline minutemen that had to be ready to fight around the clock, and the only time they got a break was when there was another team around to cover their post. With the program whittled down as it was that had to mean he and Chuck had spent years unable to leave the Shatterdomes except on official business. Herc was startled to find himself among so many civilians and visibly threw up a wall, avoiding eye contact and letting Raleigh order them a dinner that might have involved chicken. Maybe. Also could’ve been pidgeon or seagull but whatever, it tasted like bird, which was more than could be said about anything they got in the mess. They spent most of the meal gaping up at a live feed of a soccer game happening somewhere in Mongolia, hypnotized by the bouncing ball.

They were back in the Dome and debating how long it’d take to get the World Cup going again, as well as the odds of the US not sucking (a lot had changed, it was possible), when Raleigh stumbled over nothing and listed to the left. Herc flinched away again, but still waited for Raleigh to nod before making himself scarce.

When Raleigh made it to Mako’s room, she already had the door open and the chair at her desk pulled out for him while she sat on her bed.

“I missed you,” she said, sounding irritated rather than sentimental. “It was only a few hours, but I still missed you.”

“I know,” he said. “It was like this with Yancy too. We didn’t even notice at first, but we couldn’t stand to be apart.” It was relaxing just being near her, and he could see Mako’s restiveness easing into her normal stillness, where she could either explode into action or wait patiently for hours without twitching.

He could see that it was on the tip of her tongue to ask when it would end, and that consideration for his loss held her back. “I don’t know if it will ever stop,” he confessed. “If one of us had...we’re both still here.” He shrugged.

Mako looked away, but also slid over so he could join her on the bed. They leaned together, with Mako’s head on his shoulder and the sides of their boots fitted against each other like puzzle pieces. Raleigh didn’t know how the Hansens could stand to keep so much space between them. No wonder Chuck had been so wound up.

“I was so excited to drift with you again,” Mako said softly. “I would have stayed in the sim all day.” She stretched up and pressed her face to his until it hurt, then turned a little to rub her lips against his stubble so that they were soft and bright when she pulled back. “We’ve created this bond, and it’s already become irrelevant.” 

“Hey,” he protested. “Our bond saved the world, Mako. It’s never going to be irrelevant.”

“They won’t remember us,” she said. “People will want to forget the Kaiju ever happened and they’ll need to move on.”

“Well then _fuck them_.” He caught her face in his hands, reading all her frustration and pessimism and wanting more than anything to smooth it all away. “Every single person in the crew who walked into the breach with us with will remember. _We’ll_ remember.” He hesitated. “Isn’t...is that enough?”

Mako immediately looked apologetic. “Of course.” She kissed him, and he wet her dry lips. “I’m sorry. I’m just disappointed about the arbeiters.” He loved the way her accent softened the German word. “You enjoyed working on the wall.” He had, even when he knew it wouldn’t work. The labor and the height gave him peace of mind that he could never find down in the city. “I wanted to feel that for myself, rebuilding the world, with you.”

“We’ll still rebuild the world,” he insisted. “Just maybe not so literally.”

She smiled a little and kissed him again, pressing closer until he fell back, legs slung awkwardly to the side because now they were upside down on the bed and he didn’t want to put his boots on her pillow. She grunted with irritation when he wouldn’t shift to lie straight and quickly pulled away to whip their boots off and pull him until he was lying flat and she could spread herself on top of him comfortably.

She practically purred when she slid her hands under his shirt and Raleigh couldn’t help snickering against her lips. She stroked up over his belly then back down to the line of his hips, places where he was usually ticklish but which simply warmed under Mako’s touch. He could feel her...not _possessiveness_ , exactly. More like pride, like she could appreciate the work he put into his body and the discipline that kept it that way. 

“You don’t really need all this,” she said. “You’d be just as effective a fighter if you let up a little.” Still, the way she kept stroking him indicated that she didn’t exactly mind.

“I know.” He was probably running himself ragged by working out when he couldn’t sleep, but then again he’d never slept as well as he did with Mako. He ran his hands over her back and arms, feeling her wiry strength hugged by soft curves, and remembered the way she fought with a perfect balance of strength and speed that completely negated his weight advantage. “Maybe I should stick to working out with you.”

She smirked and he smirked right back. He loved that they both had dimples. “What makes you think that would be any easier?”

They pieced their future together between kisses. They didn’t care where they lived. Mako would be in charge of laundry and their schedule. Raleigh would be in charge of cooking (Mako had never cooked a day in her life) and the shopping. They were both in the habit of keeping their quarters neat as a pin, so they’d split cleaning duties with a chore wheel..

When the kaiju attacked, the world united against the threat. Now that they were safe, it was possible to think smaller again. They didn’t have the weight of the world on their shoulders anymore. For the first time in twelve years, they could think about themselves.

Somewhere in the middle of arguing over the car (Mako wanted economy, Raleigh insisted they’d need something bigger to transport all the stuff they’d need to buy) they flipped over so Mako was underneath him and they were unbuttoning their shirts. Raleigh was experienced at undressing in bunks more crowded than this one, but Mako came perilously close to kneeing him in the balls while wriggling out of her underwear.

She was still giggling while his life flashed before his eyes, and managed to grab two handfuls of his ass before he registered her wandering hands.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he protested. “I’m a delicate flower.”

She continued to grope him unapologetically. “No, you aren’t.”

“Okay maybe not, but I’m a little worse for wear.”

She switched to trailing her fingers lightly over his ass and up the contours of his lower back, apparently unconcerned with the erection jabbing her in the leg. “Do you want me to be gentle?”

Raleigh narrowed his eyes. “Mostly I wanna wipe that smirk off your face.”

He caught her lips again, turning the kiss slower and deeper now that the time for words was past. She never stopped touching him, everywhere, up his back and in his hair and down his arms. He experimented with capturing her hands to lace their fingers together, teasing her. She quickly caught on and stopped letting him catch her, which was just as well; he needed his arms free to hold himself up so she could get at his chest and stomach. One hand played with his happy trail while the other found his nipple and pinched, hard.

He broke away to gasp into her collarbone, groaning when she flicked his nipple, teasing it lightly until he clenched his stomach and moaned. He retaliated by attacking her neck with his lips, seeking out the spots that made her sigh and dig in her nails, just a little. She didn’t bruise easily, which was a little disappointing, but he made a good effort, sucking up a temporary blush all over her neck.

One of his legs wound up between hers so she could arch up and ride his thigh, rubbing her clit against him until he could feel her wetness smeared over his skin. It was honestly encouraging because he was supposed to be the experienced veteran but Mako still had him on the verge of humping her leg and making a very big mess before he’d even gotten her off once.

“I really, really want to go down on you,” he murmured. He cupped one of her breasts (perfect, perfect, soft and firm with the underlying muscle), dipping his head to drag his tongue over the small nipple, savoring the texture and Mako’s gasp.

She responded by pushing down on his shoulders and spreading her legs. He took that as a yes.

She was swollen, dark and shining and melting hot under his lips. Just for fun, he used his tongue to paint her cunt with the letters of her name, then his, then both again in kanji, because why the hell not.

“ _Raleigh,_ ” she grated. He smiled up at her pleasantly as if to say, _Yes?_

She reached down and spread herself open so that her scent hit him and he could see her twitch. “Impress me.”

Yeah, he could do that.

He teased her with a few more shallow licks, just barely catching the edge of her clit, then spread her open again and wrapped his lips around her. He sucked gently before pulling back to lap and rub with his tongue, lightly at first, then harder as she swelled wetter and wetter under his lips. He pulled back again and again, slowing until her nails scraped his scalp, then pressing in as sweet and soft as he could, working her up in measured stages until she cried out, writhing underneath him with the need to come. He played for time until her thighs were shaking and she was bucking up against him while he latched onto her clit, sucking and tonguing it until she pushed him away, whimpering happily.

He gave her a few seconds to catch her breath then went right back to work, grinning inwardly at her happy groan. He delved a little deeper to find her opening and oh sweet Jesus, she was tight, even after coming, even just around his tongue. Mako knew her body, intimately, and he knew she’d never really enjoyed fingering herself. Raleigh suspected that she hadn’t bothered to find a way to do it right, since her clit was right there and much more rewarding, and he was more than happy to devote hours to finding out what worked for her (because who didn’t enjoy fingerblasting their partner now and again?), but all things in time.

“Should I keep going?”

She mewled and clenched her thighs around his head before letting them fall open again. He figured that meant yes too.

She came again, and again, and by the fifth time he was grinding his hips into the bed, aching for her. He wasn't sure what he wanted or how to ask, but he knew he needed to come, somehow, anyhow.

He started to get up, but she stopped him with a hand high on his thigh.

He totally did not whimper.

“Please. I want to watch you.”

Okay, he totally did.

She touched him everywhere except his cock, purring in his ear as she traced the heavy muscles of his thighs. Raleigh just grabbed himself and would have finished in seconds, but she whispered to him to wait and so he did, slowing to a painful pace at her urging. She made him bring himself to the brink again and again, ordering him to explore himself in all the ways she wanted to, stopping to pet individual veins and the ridge around the head, forcing him to describe the sensations in broken whispers of heat, of wetness, of soft skin and solid flesh. 

"Please, Mako," he begged at last. "Please can I come?"

Her hands were on his abs again, following the shapes as they clenched in a misery of need. "Can't you wait?"

He stopped stroking altogether but couldn't keep his desperate hips from rocking up, humping the air frantically. " _Please!_ "

"Okay," she whispered, throwing an arm and a leg around him. "Now."

He barely got a hand on himself before he was coming explosively, making a mess of himself and Mako and Mako's ruined bed. He started to come down but she just urged him, " _More,_ ," and he convulsed again with a strangled sob, her strong grip the only thing tethering him to the earth.

He was dopey and monosyllabic for a long time afterward, nudging her until she turned on her other side and he could spoon up behind her to nuzzle the short hair at the nape of her neck where it grew extra thick, like fur. She hummed happily and played with his hand, comparing its size to hers and noting which calluses they shared (rough knuckles and pads at the base of each finger) and which were unique (the lump where her chopsticks rubbed her middle finger, the outer edge of his palm where he favored his left side while doing push-ups.

Neither of them wanted to sleep in a damp bed with the pillow tangled up in their feet, but they didn’t get a chance to change rooms.

+++

Three months later, the newly constructed arbeiter Frankenstein’s Monster got to work rebuilding the sections of Hong Kong that had been destroyed during the fight with Otachi, piloted by the solo operator Shek Qiang. Tendo’s new schematics spread to the other remaining Shatterdomes, where crews assembled arbeiters from the surplus of obsolete jaeger parts.

Aside from the initial consultations, no one seemed to be in a hurry to claim Mako and Raleigh’s time, and the pair wasn’t eager to volunteer. They planned their getaway with a promise to get their contact information to Herc once they knew what it was. The Marshall grumbled, not having the luxury of dodging diplomatic obligations, but let them go with what passed for his blessing--a jug of terrible illegal moonshine and a chopper authorized to take them anywhere they wanted to go, and forget where exactly that had been.

The days before they left were spent in distracted discussion.

“Anchorage is nice--”

“Nowhere so cold,” Mako insisted. She sitting astride his hips with his cock nestled against her naked cunt. Raleigh was inclined to agree with anything she had to say. “No matter how cute your sweaters are.”

He tried to come up with somewhere sunny that hadn’t been completely ravaged and rocked his hips a little, rubbing her clit to play for time. “You wanna hang out in Australia? Just to annoy Herc?”

She made a face, but spoiled it by biting her lip. “No deserts. What about South America?”

Raleigh considered; the coasts had gotten pounded, and the landlocked countries hadn’t featured much in the international news of the last twelve years. “Bolivia? Paraguay? Don’t they always have some kind of civil war happening?”

“Not since they became the haven of the wealthy.” She set one seemingly innocuous hand on his chest and all of Raleigh’s senses focused on the finger that was a few millimeters shy of his right nipple. “Bolivia is said to have become especially plush.”

“That kinda company might get old very fast.” His hands went to her hips in effort to turn the tables, inching closer to her clit while he made a big show of thoughtfulness. “Also my Spanish is crap and I don’t speak Portuguese. West Asia? Central Asia?”

“I don’t speak most of those languages either, do you?” She gave in, rolling his nipple lightly, and Raleigh didn’t think he’d ever been harder in his _life_.

“Canada, then,” he said stiffly. “Close to the border. Cold winters, warm summers. The best--” he choked when she rocked her hips, sinking onto his cock with ease. “Best of both worlds--Mako, oh my god--”

“Perfect,” she replied easily, riding him. “We can use the lot I purchased just outside Vancouver.”

Most of his focus was on not coming immediately, but he still managed to scrape together enough brain cells to ask, “Wuh...what?”

“There is a saying Marshall Pentecost taught me,” Mako continued conversationally, with only a slight strain in her voice. “When there is blood on the streets, buy property.” She smirked, heavy-lidded. “Coastal land is a buyer’s market right now.”

Raleigh gathered enough breath to whistle and began rolling his hips under her, finding the angle she liked while teasing her clit with his thumb. “When? How?”

“I’ve worked very hard and I’ve never paid rent.” She shrugged and he grinned and then they were both giggling as he sped up, bouncing her in his lap.

They made very little sense for a very long time.

Afterward, when they’d cleaned up and chugged a couple vitamin shakes, Raleigh turned to Mako and propped his head on his hand. “So, moneybags, what’s on this lot of yours?”

“Nothing, right now. It’s a square plot with a fence around it.” She drew a lopsided square in the air with her finger, already dropping off.

“Wait, do you know how to build a house?”

She yawned and pulled him down onto the pillow. “I know how to build a jaeger.”

+++

It turned out houses were very different from jaegers.

Languages, they knew. Fighting, they knew. Mako, apparently, was a real estate tycoon in her spare time. The war, however, had leant itself to specialization, and peacetime concerns like well-rounded high school curriculums including shop classes had fallen by the wayside. Raleigh could hammer things together and Mako make them fire rockets and project holographic weapons systems at the same time, but neither of them knew what drywall was until they looked it up.

They needed a consult. Gottlieb had already left on a lecture tour (“Something Something Something Mathematics to Something Something and Predict Something Phenomena”), and Newt had been lost to a think tank looking to genetically engineer a solution for kaiju blue, but luckily for them there were still several geniuses milling around the Shatterdome.

“Tendo?”

“Yeah, Raleigh?”

“We need some math.”

Tendo chuckled. “Okay. I have math. How much do you need?”

“We actually need a program,” Mako clarified. “Something to help us plan the construction of a house and generate models.”

“And if it could come with information on stuff like how thick walls have to be to house pipes and wiring--”

“--and not collapse on top of us--” Mako added,

“--that would be great,” Raleigh finished.

Tendo flicked his eyes between them, amused. “Most of the programs I know are government property but I could probably find something that works. What operating system are you using?”

They blinked, then turned to share exasperated glares. Mako’s tablet was government property too.

“Go buy a computer, guys.” Tendo, being Tendo, was too nice to laugh outright, but his eyes were dancing. “Let me know what you’re working with and I’ll see what’s available.”

+++

Logically, Raleigh knew he should have doubts. They didn’t know what they were doing. They’d only known each other ( _their entire lives_ ) a few weeks, and as much as they’d shared space, they’d never actually lived together. Mako had never lived on her own at all, and Raleigh had only managed for a handful of years that he didn’t remember fondly.

Practically, it all worked out anyway, so he told logic to shove it.

It only took Mako a few hours to master the architecture software Tendo found, and before Raleigh even began to be comfortable with the interface she already had a second computer purchased so she could sync them and switch from one to the other as she worked, designing their house on one screen and researching individual elements on the other. She wanted solar panels on their roof and showed Raleigh solar glass that they could use to make windows and get even more power. Everything inside the house, from the lightbulbs to the toilets, would run ultra-efficient, minimizing their drain during the reconstruction. She worked out what they should be able to do themselves, pleased with Raleigh’s construction experience, and when they would need to call in experts. She already found and contacted contractors near the plot, fast talking until they finally gave her their rates so she could compare, contrast and establish both a timeline and a budget for the entire project.

Raleigh mostly kept her supplied with bubble tea and waited until it was his turn to jump in, which didn’t really come until they arrived in Richmond, British Columbia and stared at the empty 12,000 square feet that would be their future home.

Mako tsked. Raleigh hummed inquisitively.

She looked up and down their new street, eyeing the boxy, antebellum houses speculatively. A few were newer, built in the angular semi-Tudor style Mako favored because it created more surface area for the roof solar panels, though it was at odds with modern Japanese aesthetics. “We’re paying the neighbor’s kid to mow the lawn.”

The idea of quiet suburban domesticity like that made Raleigh shiver. On this street, it seemed possible. The entire greater Vancouver area was sheltered by islands and narrow straits along the coast that discouraged kaiju, although the convenient placement between Anchorage and San Francisco had merited a PPDC research base. In Richmond the Fraser River was lightly contaminated with kaiju blue, but other than that, the war hadn’t touched this quiet suburb, except to send the wealthier residents fleeing inland. The lot Mako bought was only empty because the previous owners had been planning to put up yet another big Tudor remodel, but only managed to finish the demolition stage before relocating to Calgary. It wasn’t far enough inland to get reclaimed by the government for a resettlement camp, and enough rich people held onto their land to keep the local authorities from allowing it to become a shantytown.

Hell, even the street name seemed like a relic. Barnes Drive. Raleigh’s last civilian address had been at the corner of Brawler and Yukon, streets renamed for the first jaeger, with D’onofrio Drive just a block away. He knew there was more than one Becket Blvd. out there, too. There’d be Mori Streets soon, if there weren’t already.

Mako’s hand slipped into his, and he squeezed, letting her pull him back to the present. These 12,000 square feet were theirs. Who cared what the rest of the world did. 

+++

They rented an apartment while the house was in production, and it was so cosy Raleigh almost didn’t want to leave.

He went out to get groceries and came back to Mako lying starfished on the living room floor, smiling to herself. She’d never had more than one room before, only cramped quarters that joined onto Stacker’s and then, finally, a single room all to herself. Raleigh’d had an apartment for a few years, but it had always felt like too much space for little old him. Here, he was happy to see Mako expand, leaving her few belongings scattered conspicuously around the space just because she could.

“Good news,” he greeted her. “The Asian market is still going strong and they even got a shipment of Yan-Yan.”

Mako was up in a flash and grabbing for the cup of cracker sticks and dipping chocolate almost before he finished talking, but she still offered him the first bite. He took it, knowing it was a preemptive peace offering and that she’d hog every other cup in the pantry.

Which was why he was going to hide the strawberry flavored cups in the broom closet, up on top of their temperamental water heater.

Later their crunching filled the quiet while Mako scrolled through plans for a proposed arbeiter chassis, inserting notes to send back to Tendo, and Raleigh bent over the big tabletop tablet they’d bought. He’d had a minor heart attack the day he’d checked his bank account and boggled at his balance, only to deflate a little when he realized the PPDC had gotten its administration in order and sent him survivor’s benefits, with sincerest regrets as to the delay. Mako had them too, and by unspoken agreement they quietly put the money towards their home, adding plans for a second story and finished basement.

The whole thing went up a few months later, so quickly it made Raleigh’s head spin. One day it was an empty patch of grass, then it was a giant hole, then it was foundations and framework and then, quite suddenly, a house, with walls and windows and doors that opened and shut. The first floor was technically built along an open plan, but all the rooms could be separated by Japanese-style sliding doors so they wouldn’t have to heat the whole space in the winter. Upstairs another sliding door separated their offices, to suit their needs for privacy or company. The basement contained a control console inside a storm-proofed room, where they could monitor the power generated by the solar array and windows, as well as a home gym with a backdoor leading up to the yard, which had been carefully leveled and re-turfed to let them spar without worrying about hidden sticks or stones.

It was perfect, and they felt completely awkward in it for the first month.

“Did you ever play house?” Mako asked. They were eating breakfast at the kitchen table. Now that it was real they weren’t sure why they thought they’d need a dining room, too.

“I think I’m playing it now,” Raleigh replied, answering her real question.

She nodded and they glanced around, taking in the emptiness. “We need jobs,” she said. “We’ve fucked in all the rooms; it’s time to break out and rejoin society.”

Mako said “we” but she really meant Raleigh; she’d continued to work for the PPDC as a consultant, commuting long-distance to design arbeiters after Tendo and his team finished the software. Raleigh, meanwhile, was at loose ends, contriving work to do on the house when it was already complete. He spent the rest of the day going through job listings, feeling increasingly guilty as he realized he could apply literally anywhere and be guaranteed acceptance.

Then his email chimed, offering the perfect solution on a silver platter.

“Newt and Hermann have been busy,” Mako said, walking into his office with the same email open on her phone. Newt’s think tank had engineered a new species of phytoplankton with...plant...digestive...things…full of nitrifying bacteria that could metabolize kaiju blue, detoxifying the oceans. Hermann contributed mathematical models of how the plankton would promote algae growth, which would in turn support a return of natural marine and plant populations, before dying off naturally as ammonia levels dropped. Even then, the dead phytoplankton would enrich the oceans, supporting even more natural species.

They scrolled through the snarl of equations to the bottom, where a shameless Newt asked them if they’d mind plastering their dimples all over the Restore the Shore press releases, and a sheepish Hermann added that word _would_ spread more quickly with their names among the keywords.

 _I’ll do you one better,_ Raleigh wrote back. _Do you guys need a volunteer?_

It turned out, they did.

First there was a whirl of travel as he, Mako, Newt and Hermann flew from coast to coast, speaking to local officials and giving press conferences for the local news. The others kept Raleigh at the forefront and he could feel Mako snickering behind him as he did his best to be charming, earnest and personable when all he wanted to do was duck the cameras and get his hands dirty doing something productive. Still, it seemed to work, and when he suited up in rubber waders and a high-vis rain poncho on the far side of Vancouver Island, he did so among a volunteer force of thousands, all ready to reclaim their oceans and bring balance back to their planet.

They took speedboats out into the open ocean, collecting samples and attaching sensors to buoys that would monitor ocean ammonia levels. It was good to be doing something bigger than himself but at the same time, Raleigh felt tiny. Standing in the surf as a man was very different from striding out into the ocean in a jaeger, especially without Mako at his side. He could still sense her, on the mainland, and he knew when she was busy and when she was thinking of him, but she wasn’t _with_ him and at first he felt lost, the way he was in those years after Yance, when he was really alone. He tried to remind himself that he was surrounded by people but the other volunteers gazed at him with stars in their eyes and it grated, pulling the corners of his mouth down and raising his shoulders until they ached from the way he was hunching in on himself.

 _Get over yourself,_ he thought, or thought he thought, before he recognized Mako’s exasperation prodding him. _Go. Make friends. Tell me about them when you come home._

He snorted out loud, startling the people near him, and the cold flush of embarrassment was just what he needed to jolt him into action. He faked a sneeze to explain the snort then made a strategic retreat to another group of volunteers whom he hadn’t yet completely alienated by being either a grumpy ass or a freak on the receiving end of a telepathic scolding.

It turned out there was no shortage of stories to tell if he asked open-ended questions, and when he got home very late that night he was buzzing with all the things he wanted to tell Mako about all the people who just _lived_ during the war, about the babies born and the families started and broken and mended again.

She listened, smiling softly and very graciously not nodding off against the pillows while he perched on the side of the bed chattering at her only to jump nearly out of his skin when something ran over his foot.

“Oh, that’s Chiisai Inu,” Mako said, leaning over the bed to grin at the little...black and silver...robot dog thing trying to climb Raleigh’s leg. It was about seven inches long, didn’t seem to have a head, and had six legs, but there was a weird kind of earnestness about it that made “inu” (“dog”) appropriate anyway. “Did I mention I got a new phone?”

The question was actually relevant because Raleigh could tell that Mako had salvaged some bits from her old phone-- most obviously the camera, light sensor and battery, although there was probably more that he just didn’t recognize. “I see that,” he replied, picking it up. It whirred at him, then made a sucking sound so loud he nearly dropped it. “Mako, what the hell?”

“I leave crumbs everywhere,” she explained, “and we both hate vacuuming, so I figured what we really needed was something that would take care of the crumbs for us.”

“Don’t they already make little vacuum robots?” Chiisai Inu, obviously realizing that making hoover sounds at him wasn’t going to get him to put it down, instead released a raucous mash-up of every infuriating preset ringtone Raleigh had ever heard. Only Mako’s swift reaction kept him from smothering the thing with a pillow after he set it back down.

“Right, so, it’s clearly part phone. Where did the rest of it come from?”

“The scrap left over from the command room, the hairdryer we never use.” She shrugged. “Nothing you’ll miss, I promise.”

Chiisai Inu, meanwhile, had clearly determined that Raleigh had nothing for it to eat, and was spidering its way around the floor, whirring to itself. “Hey, Cookie Monster,” he called. “I left some sand by the front door.”

He didn’t expect a response, but the thing actually seemed to perk up, skittering around to zip out the door. Raleigh heard a series of clatters descending to the first floor. “It can go down stairs?!”

“And up.” Mako smiled sweetly when he gaped, then yawned and settled back against the pillows. “Which is more than you can say about other vacuum robots.”

He shook his head and got up to get ready for bed. “This is what happens when I leave you alone for a day.”

“I’m going to make us a lawnmower bot next,” she added, watching him undress. She always did that. He never had an uninterrupted shower, either. He was over the embarrassment, if he’d ever felt any to begin with, but he still got a tingle down his spine when he felt her eyes on him. “There’s a junkyard over near the slums and it’s filling up with all the broken things people are starting to replace.” She rolled over to face him when he got into bed and they reached for each other under the covers, hungry for all the touches they’d missed but too tired to make up for the separation properly. “I might make street cleaner robots and trash compactor robots, too. The slums are a mess and it’s taking forever to get basic sanitation back up.”

“Basic sanitation would mean jobs for all those people though,” he pointed out.

“True.” She let him wrap around her so that she was on her back with him sprawled over her chest, carefully resting his head on her sternum and not her breasts. “But I was also thinking of just making toys. Sakka Inu. Hokke Inu.”

He breathed deeply, happy that her skin smelled just like his, and groped for the touch panel on the headboard that would put out the lights. “Why are these all inu?”

“I like inu,” she mumbled, finding the panel for him, and with the darkness came sleep.

+++

Two robots later, Herc showed up.

“Allegedly I’m here to inspect the PPDC base and get reports from you both,” he said, dropping onto their sofa with a groan. “But actually I’m here to have you two walk my dog while I take a fucking load off.”

Mako, already busy playing with Max, left Raleigh to get Herc a drink and warn him about the army of knee-high robots that were transporting his bags up to the guestroom.

They had no idea what to do with a guest beyond covering Herc with a blanket when his eyes fell shut. They slipped out to the yard to play fetch with Max and the bots, which turned into frantically rescuing Hokke Inu from being smashed to component pieces during tug-o-war. The victorious Max chewed his rope toy placidly, ignoring Chiisai Inu’s scolding until the little bot sicced its ringtone library on him and he fled behind Raleigh, who tried for the millionth time to just delete the damn tones.

He and Max glared at Mako’s giggling. “I wish you wouldn’t encourage this,” Raleigh said. “It’s only funny because Chiisai never uses them on you.”

“I never give it a reason,” she retorted. “They should be allowed to defend themselves.”

“You shouldn’t fight in front of the kids.” They hadn’t heard Herc come to the back door, still wrapped in the blanket. “You have to present a united front.”

They stared at him, then at each other. Mako arched a speculative brow.

“Let’s try to have a garden first,” Raleigh hedged. “The bots don’t count because they remember to charge themselves.”

Mako’s eyes lit up. “I could make one that doesn’t, so we’d have to remember to take care of it and charge it every couple hours…”

Raleigh grimaced. “Maybe start with every couple days at first. I see myself coming home and finding the bot dead under your desk while Chiisai cannibalizes it for upgrades.”

At that, the bot switched on its vacuum, catching Raleigh’s thumb and making him yelp and try to fling it away.

For now, they had the bots. Eventually, they’d get some plants. Maybe a few years later they’d get a pet, one of those tortoises or lizards that only eat once every few days. Somewhere down the line, there could be a towheaded brat with deep dimples and hazel eyes, but there was no rush. It was a brave new world, and they’d build it together, one piece at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Chiisai Inu = Little Dog (came up when I did a search for Japanese dog names)  
> Sokka Inu = Soccer Dog  
> Hokke Inu = Hockey Dog
> 
> Bonus behind the scenes feature: there really is a Barnes Drive in British Columbia which, according to Google Maps, has a vacant lot where Mako and Raleigh will build their house.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Old Dog and New Dogs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105144) by [artificiallifecreator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificiallifecreator/pseuds/artificiallifecreator)




End file.
